Iceland's Bishop Is Hopeful For Future

A GENERAL VIEW OF REYKAJAVIK
By HAROLD BUTCHER
The third Icelander to enter the priesthood in more than four centuries, Hakon Loftsson, who recently corn. pleted his studies at St. Mary's Seminary, Baltimore, will leave the U.S. on Easter Sunday for .*..s native Reykjavik, where he will be ordained in Rey ...javik Cathedral by Bishop Johannes Gunnarsson, VicarApostolic of Iceland.
Mr. Loftsson, whose ordination is scheduled for May 24, is a convert to the Catholic faith. Born in Reykjavik, he was sent to Aberdeen, Scotland, when he was 15 to study English. He made his home there with a Catholic family and. impressed by their devoutness, continued his studies of Catholicism on his return to Ireland. He became the only Catholic student in the University of Reykjavik.
For 20 years Gunnar Einarsson was the only native Catholic in Iceland. To-day, one of his sons, Johannes Gunnarsson, is Bishop of Iceland, and the most prominent building in the capital city of Reykjavik is the Catholic Cathedral. Catholics now number about 400, and rapid progress is being made in this outpost of Christendom.
Sixteenth century Icelanders had no wish to change from Catholicism to Lutheranism. Bishop Jon Arason, of HoIar. and Bishop Ogmund Palsson, of Skatholt, both resisted the change; Bishop Arason was defeated in battle and beheaded at Skalholt, and Bishop Palsson was seized and died either in Denmark or at sea.
For over three centuries it was impossible to assign priests or bishops to Icelend. Finally, in 1857, when Gunnar Einarsson was a little boy of four, there came to Iceland a French Catholic priest, Fr. Beaudoin, who accompanied Fr. Bernard to care for French fishermen whose work brought them to this North Atlantic island. Seventeen years later, in 1874, Catholics acquired freedom of worship under the constitution enacted in that year, and the tide began slowly to turn toward Catholicism.
TWO NOTABLE • CONVERTS
Notable was the conversion of Gunnar Einarsson and his friend Jon Sveinsson. They went in 1870 to study in Copenhagen, and, while there, they attended the regular conferences of the Catholic Prefect Apostolic of Denmark. Eventually both decided to be come Catholics. Sveinsson went to Amiens and joined the Society of Jesus.
Einarsson returned to Iceland. He married, and had three sons and two daughters. The son who became Bishop in 1943, was born August 3, 1897.
By the time that Johannes Gunnarsson (Johannes, son of Gunnar) was consecrated in Washington, D.C., July 7, 1943, second Catholic Bishop of Ice
land since the execution of Jon Arason ill 1550, the Catholic population had grown to about 400 souls.
Fr. Beaudoin had bought the property in Reykjavik upon which the Cathedral and surrounding buildings
now stand. The first real Church building was erected in 1897, the year the present Bishop was born ; and the consecration of the cathedral came on July 23, 1929, when the ceremony was pct formed by Cardinal Van Rossum. Prefect of the Sacred Congregation of Propaganda in Rome, who visited Iceland for that purpose and to consecrate Mgr. Martin Meulemberg, S.M.M., as Bishop of the independent Prefecture Apostolic of Iceland. In 1924 a new Catholic centre was opened in Hafnarfjordur, where a house for missionaries was founded and a hospital of 50 beds. In 1938 a school was opened there also. In 1936 a new hospital unit was added to the old one in Reykjavik, and a new one was founded in Stykkisholmur.
In the autumn of 1945 two of the Carmelite nuns—Sister Veronica and Sister Martina—returned to Iceland after spending more than two years in the United States on account of their Hafnarfjordur Carmel being rented by the American occupation troops.
The Sisters sailed for America in August, 1943, with their Superior, Mollie! Elizabeth, who died in Boston
in 194-4. Originally the Sisters, first Carmelites in Iceland, went to this northern land from Holland in 1939. They made the dangerous voyage to America in a convoy of 60 ships, and lived in Carmels in Indianapolis, Newport and Boston. Their return to Iceland was made from La Guardia airport, New York.
THE BISHOP OPTIMISTIC
When I saw Johannes Gunnarsson in New York just before his consecration he was optimistic as to the outlook for Catholicism in his native land. He based his optimism largely on the definiteness of the Catholic faith in an age of uncertainty. When men arc in doubt the Catholic religion answers their doubts.
An important fact to be borne in mind in the growth of the Church is that Iceland is no longer on the rim of civilisation. This country is now on an important world airway and its former isolation has broken down. Business people are going there because
of commercial links with Britain, Europe and the United States.
Tourists will flock there in increasing numbers. especially with the erection of a splendid modern hotel in Reykjavik, due in 1948. Iceland is coming into the main current of the world's life and thought.
Through books, also. Iceland can be brought into touch with the best of Catholic thought. In Reykjavik there are attractive bookshops where one can browse happily. There are books in Icelandic, Danish and Swedish, and a wide choice of English and American
authors. The shop assistants speak English and all educated Icelanders are linguists.
Here, then, is an opportunity for really first-rate Catholic books. They will have to he good to satisfy the highly intelligent Icelandic reader — a test by no means difficult to meet when so many good Catholic books are being produced.
When literature goes hand-in-hand with the work of priests and nuns and Catholic lay people, the growth of Catholic Christianity in Iceland will be steady and assured.